1. Field of Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid ejecting apparatus.
2. Description of Related Art
There have been known liquid ejecting apparatuses for printing using liquid (for example, ultraviolet curable (UV) ink) that is curable by irradiation with light (a kind of electromagnetic waves, e.g., ultraviolet rays (UV)). In such a liquid ejecting apparatus, liquid is ejected from nozzles of a head onto a medium and, after that, ink dots (hereinafter, simply referred to as “dots”) formed on the medium are irradiated with light. Thus, the dots are cured and are fixed to the medium. Accordingly, good printing can be performed even on a medium that is resistant to absorbing liquid (refer to JP-A-2000-158793, for example).
An apparatus for performing two curing steps has been proposed as one of the above-described type of liquid ejecting apparatuses. For example, just after the formation of dots, the dots are irradiated with light of low irradiation energy, thus preventing ink or dots from bleeding or spreading (precuring). After that, the precured dots are irradiated with light of high irradiation energy, thus fully curing the dots (full curing). In this case, a light source (for full curing) that radiates light for full curing is placed downstream of a head in the transporting direction in which a medium is transported (for example, just before a position where the medium is ejected from the apparatus) so that the length of the light source in the moving direction is longer than a maximum width of the medium subjected to printing.
Disadvantageously, in such a liquid ejecting apparatus, heat generation due to light irradiation for full curing is large.